


No More Shall Be Lost

by Glinda



Series: In The Cards [4]
Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-05
Updated: 2009-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-09 01:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lancelot returns to Camelot to find all is not well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No More Shall Be Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://community.livejournal.com/fanfictarot/profile)[**fanfictarot**](http://community.livejournal.com/fanfictarot/), with thanks to [](http://netgirl-y2k.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**netgirl_y2k**](http://netgirl-y2k.dreamwidth.org/) for betaing. No Season 2 spoilers due to my not having seen any of it yet.

It is almost eight months after Uther's death that word reaches Lancelot of his being summoned to Camelot. This delay has probably been increased by the messenger's difficulty in locating him. While Camelot requires its knights to be of noble birth, there are wars aplenty on the Continent where a cool head and a good sword arm will make many a commander overlook certain details. Thus, when the summons eventually finds him, he's in the care of a convent in Gaul and quite unable to move anywhere.

When at last he is able to answer the summons, Lancelot is rather surprised to by how much like coming home returning to Camelot feels. Familiar pathways, fields and streets, he is looking forward now to having his banishment lifted. He is therefore somewhat surprised to find his audience attended by all the knights of the realm in full regalia.

"A little warning," he mutters to Merlin, as the younger man adorns him with the appropriate vestments, "would have not gone amiss."

"After all the hours we spent trawling the scrolls on the laws of Camelot, chivalry and knights to find a loop hole, with more legal standing than Arthur saying 'I'll knight who I damn well like'. By my reckoning we've earned the right to spring a few surprises on certain people."

"Yes, but why me? Not that I don't appreciate the honour and the effort, but what have I done to deserve embarrassing surprises sprung upon me. I've been injured," he protests.

"Hmm...how about that one. Nearly got yourself horribly killed. Given Morgana terrible nightmares. Worried Gwen and I sick. Made Arthur absolutely unbearable because Gods forbid that he should admit to himself or anyone else that he's concerned about your health."

Lancelot must concede that perhaps his friend has a point. He is, however, quite taken with the notion of having people so concerned with his fate.

All is not well in Camelot, Lancelot can tell after only a short time within her walls. War is brewing and the Lady Morgana is gone. Her absence is spoken of in abstract only. However, for all the lack of discussion, the subject colours so much else in castle life. From the hard set of Arthur's eyes when he is knighting Lancelot, declaring that no more friends shall be lost to the tides of the world. In the cagey way the Merlin speaks of the power rising in the West; that must be defeated. To the way that Gwen wears her new role as intended royal consort with perfect equanimity, except when she is being introduced to a room at feasts as "The Lady Guinevere." He thinks perhaps he is the only one who sees her flinch slightly, forever expecting Morgana's name in place of her own. He comes to understand why they need him so desperately, not for his experience of 'proper' war as Arthur tells the rest of the knights, but for his distance from recent events. He knows little of the circumstances of Morgana's absence, can only see that her return is essential to this coming war's outcome. If he is to play general he will need more information, and to get information he shall have to play spy.

The advantage of being a personable young man, Lancelot finds, is that people talk to you. Women of a certain age want to mother him, and in return for a bit of heavy lifting, he often finds himself in receipt of a bag of apples, a mug of mead and all the gossip he's willing to listen to. The knights too have a tendency to gossip that would surprise anyone who hadn't spent much time around soldiers. Once they get to know him and realise that he is as much in the dark about certain things as they are, they compete to tell him their own theories, of the night that Nimueh returned, Gaius died and Morgana vanished. Little is certain, only that now an army approaches Camelot with a sorceress at its head and that in the forests the druids have split; some now following a barely grown boy of uncanny magical powers. Rumour names the boy Mordred and claims him the druid child who escaped execution not long after Lancelot first came to Camelot. An alliance between the two is greatly feared.

Taking the information he has gathered, collating it into something resembling the truth; he begins to see what makes others speak of his potential as a general. In turn he speaks to each of his three friends, taking a different tack with each. Learning more with each conversation; slowly weaving the beginnings to a plan. Whether she serves as Nimueh's prisoner or acolyte, Morgana must be retrieved; of this he grows ever more certain.

Lancelot chooses his day carefully, to present them with his now fully formed plan. Using a large set of scales borrowed from Gaius' old workroom to illustrate his points he begins:  
"When you called me back to Camelot, you said you sought to reverse an injustice, to redress an imbalance. You wished the failings of the last King not to colour the reign of the current incumbent. I stand before you today to speak of another facet of Camelot out of kilter, another act of justice that may pull the balance back into our favour for the war ahead..."


End file.
